Automatic towel dispensers are well-known devices used to provide towel to users for many purposes including personal hygiene, food preparation and general maintenance of cleanliness. Automatic towel dispensers typically use a motor-powered dispensing mechanism to dispense the towel from the dispenser to a user. Automatic towel dispensers may be used with a range of materials but are commonly used to dispense paper towel in the form of web. The term “towel” as used herein is intended to be expansive in meaning and is intended to include paper and other types of materials. Examples of other materials capable of being dispensed from an automatic dispenser are kraft paper, plastic food wrap and toilet tissue. The specific type of material comprising the towel is not critical provided that the material can be dispensed from an automatic dispenser.
One important issue facing manufacturers of automatic towel dispensers is the need to provide the user with a length of towel sufficient to meet the user's needs while at the same time avoiding the dispensing of excessive and wasteful amounts of towel. Typically, this objective is achieved by controlling the dispensing mechanism during a dispense cycle so that towel is dispensed in an amount estimated to be sufficient to meet the needs of the average user. A further control is typically provided to impose a delay between dispense cycles to prevent immediate cycling of the dispenser and dispensing of excessive lengths of towel. The delay prevents a subsequent dispense cycle from being initiated immediately after completion of a preceding dispense cycle. The delay is typically in the range of about one to four seconds in duration.
For some users, the length of towel dispensed in the dispense cycle may be insufficient. With a conventional dispenser, the user would be required to initiate a new dispense cycle to obtain additional towel. However, the length of towel dispensed in two dispense cycles may be more than that needed by the user and may amount to waste. And, a user might find it inconvenient to wait as much as four seconds for initiation of a subsequent dispense cycle.
There is a need for improvement in these and other aspects of automatic dispenser design and operation.